The 9 Worst Ways to Use Facebook for Business

Facebook fan pages
are useful tools for connecting with your audience on a site they visit each and every day. You can broadcast messages on their Facebook homepage newsfeed, spark conversations that can provide your company with valuable feedback, and encourage fans to upload their own content. But there are some common mistakes that companies make when
using Facebook for business
.

1. Duplicate your Twitter Strategy on Facebook

Twitter
is another great place to converse with your audience, but it’s a completely different platform, and should be treated as such. Although you’ll want to tweet several times a day to get noticed in people’s overloaded Twitter streams, applying the same frequency to Facebook could annoy your fans and lead to them hiding your updates. Additionally, you don’t want to duplicate the same exact content you use on Twitter for Facebook. Not only will fans following you on both networks notice, but you have much more than 140 characters to work with on Facebook. Take advantage of the extra space! You can even repurpose the same concepts as your tweets; just rework them to fit Facebook.

2. Post Only Plain-Text Status Updates

Just posting standard text updates gets boring after a while. You have several different ways to
share content on Facebook
. In addition to your standard status update, you can also post links, upload photos, upload videos, or post a question (which non-fans can also see). Just like you’d want to
vary the content type in your blog
to keep readers interested, mix up the content type on your Facebook page to make your wall look fun and interesting.

3. Don’t Allow Fans to Share Content

Not letting your fans post to your wall defeats half the purpose of having a
Facebook page
. Not only do you want to share your updates with fans, but you want to allow fans to share their thoughts, opinions, feedback, and even pictures and videos with you. Don’t you want fans sharing pictures of them using your product for the rest of your Facebook audience to see? Or hear what sort of product ideas your fans wish you’d add to your product line? To make sure the share settings are turned on, go to wall settings and make sure all the boxes are checked.

4. Don’t Comment on Your Fans’ Content

If your fans have started posting on your wall and sharing pictures on your page, don’t ignore them. Comment on what they’ve posted, even if it’s just a simple “Thanks for sharing!” or click of the like button. Not only will it encourage them to post even more content, but new fans will see that you care about what your audience has to say, and they’ll start sharing content with you as well.

5. Don’t Share Your Fans’ Content

As someone who works at, well, any business, you’re probably really busy.
Coming up with content
to post on Facebook and Twitter probably takes up a fair bit of your very valuable time. So why not share some of that user generated content? If someone shares a great photo of your product in action, click the share button and say “Check out this great photo Joe Smith posted!” Not only do fans love other fan photos, but you’ll make Joe Smith awfully happy.

6. Don’t use Facebook Questions to Find More Fans

Facebook recently launched
Questions
, an application that allows anyone, including Fan Pages, to ask and answer questions from the Facebook community. Just like LinkedIn Answers, Facebook Questions is a great place to establish yourself as an industry knowledge leader. It’s also one of the only ways that pages can go out and reach out to non-fan Facebook members for free, so take advantage of it!

7. Use a Profile Image That has a Poor Thumbnail

When you upload a new profile image, Facebook automatically sizes it down to fit the thumbnail size that appears in users’ news feeds and your wall. On your fan page, your brand’s logo could be cut off in the thumbnail, and this is bad for brand recognition. Here are some fan pages that still haven’t gotten it quite right:

8. Don’t Share Your Facebook Page on Your Website

Don’t keep your Facebook page a secret from your website visitors, who are the people most likely to actually like your page and become a fan. Facebook provides pages with a
Facebook like box
, formally called a fan box, which you can add to your website so that people can like your page without ever leaving your website. It’s just a matter of
copy/pasting a bit of code
.

9. Don’t Develop a Personality

Your company Facebook page shouldn’t have a corporate, stuffy tone. Facebook is a place where users go to connect with their friends. They don’t want to go to Facebook to get your sales pitch. You can still maintain a professional presence and have a casual tone. Just take a look at the
Starbucks
,
Coca-Cola
, and
Skittles
Facebook pages; these are three of the top product pages on Facebook, and have established fun yet professional personalities on their pages.

Great article. In my experience, the mistake I see most businesses make is not allowing fans to share content (#3). Most of the time, it is because they fear losing control of their brand if they allow people to talk about the company on its Facebook page.

Another common mistake is that some companies spend too much time talking about themselves rather than sharing relevant, interesting content. I think most of these mistakes happen at companies that have not fully embrace or understand the value of social media.

They should be passionate about getting involved in social media and excited about developing new relationships and strengthening existing bonds with the community.

Setting up a Page and then letting it be inactive won't help your company. It's like handing out your email address and saying, "Oh, I don't ever check or respond to my messages. But you should still email me anyway!"

#10 - Don't ever do anything to attract fans to your page, especially new fans. Run fun or interesting promotions once in a while to establish reasons to visit and interact with Facebook pages. Promotions or sweepstakes can have a huge impact on your fan base.

At Fanbooster (a tool for building engaging Facebook tabs for business pages) we always promote the idea of making your page different to your website. I see so many simple duplications of the company home page and it's missing the point completely.

A facebook business page should be the place where you can gauge the reaction of your audience with polls and sweepstakes, video, news that you really want to "push out" to your fans because not everybody checks out the home page every day but we all log into facebook and receive the status updates.

I also think that a page should be designed to the best of abilities. How many times do you see cheap basic pages when the company is huge and this is a bad image reflection

Excellent. I'm neck-deep in an industry that just doesn't get it... which is GREAT for my speaking fees and schedule, but I keep repeating mantras like #9 so much that I talk to myself on the road :) Keep up the great posts. I'm enjoying HubSpot, especially that cool one-take video.

I can't wait for Facebook Questions to be available to EVERYONE! I need to start focusing on what a fan can gain from purchasing my product rather than sell sell sell. I also need to start commenting more on fan's posts!

How about not filling out your INFO tab? I run a small business development Center in rural Arkansas. The other day I pulled 40 small business pages I have "liked" over the past year to look at and believe it or not 6 had actually not filled out anything on the info tab.

In the same review found 8 that had a "spammer" posting on their wall about "work at home moms" making money that the facebook page administrator just let stay on their wall.

As always, an informative posts with lots of points to take away and work on. Thanks! :-)

Regarding #3, do you think there's any need to include a disclaimer around ownership/responsibility for photos posted online? We haven't enabled user posts yet as we're a bit sensitive to the potential issues around fans posting pictures of children (particularly other people's children) online.

I think the biggest mistake can be to simply rely on your brand. Your facebook page HAS to be engaging. If you look at Oreo's page, they have a tab that has recipes so that fans get get baking. It's so simple but so effective!

@Lois - As long as you monitor activity on your Facebook page, you can delete any objectionable photos fans upload. Just click on the photo, and click "Remove This Photo" below the image. Think of all the great user generated content you're missing out on by preventing everyone from posting!

@Dave Willcutts - You're right that LinkedIn is definitely more business-based, but B2B companies can definitely have successful Facebook pages. Your fan base might not be as large, but you'll still be sending updates and sparking conversations with a relevant audience. And if you have the budget for it, you can launch a Facebook engagement ad campaign that targets people based on their interest or network.

My number 10 is letting your page languish. If you do not post often or leave your page for a few months, it becomes less and less effective, when you do come back to it you will find that people are not used to seeing it or dont recognise it any more.

I totally agree with Shannon Sullivan. People who ask me to send them something and then tell me they never read their emails make me nuts!So why bother with a Facebook page if you're not going to update it?